Kate Middleton has long been a magnet for unproven rumors: She pressured an art gallery to remove a royal portrait! She separated from her husband! She changed her hairstyle to distract from pregnancy rumors! She didn't give birth to her daughter!
This year, speculation gained momentum. Ms Middleton – now Catherine, Princess of Wales – has kept a low profile since Christmas. Kensington Palace said she was recovering from “scheduled abdominal surgery” and was not expected to resume her royal duties until after Easter. Conspiracy theorists had other, more sinister ideas. The only explanation for the future queen's long absence is that she is missing, dying or deceased and that someone is trying to cover it up.
“KATE MIDDLETON IS PROBABLY DEAD,” read one post on X, the text flanked by skulls and screaming emojis.
With her fabricated death, the princess joins a number of other celebrities and public figures – from President Biden to Elon Musk – who have been identified by numerous online detectives in recent months as clones, doppelgangers, AI-generated avatars or otherwise were classified as non-living. They are breathing people.
For many people who spread falsehoods, it's harmless fun: a casual game of gumball that only takes a few clicks, a goldmine for meme generators. Others, however, spend “countless hours” in pursuit, following other skeptics down rabbit holes and demanding proof of life from celebrities.
Whatever the motivation, an urge to question reality remains, misinformation experts say. Lately, this same sense of distrust has influenced conversations about elections, race, health care and climate, despite extensive and irrefutable evidence to the contrary.
Much of the internet is now divided over basic facts, a phenomenon exacerbated by increasing political polarization, distrust of institutions like news and science, and the rise of artificial intelligence and other technologies that can distort perceptions of the truth .
In such an environment, celebrity conspiracy theories became a way to take control of “a really precarious, frightening and troubling moment,” said Whitney Phillips, an assistant professor of media ethics and digital platforms at the University of Oregon.
“The darkness that shapes our politics will also seep into the more light-hearted articulations of speculation,” she said. “It just speaks to a sense of unease in the world.”
The history of popular culture is full of postmortem claims that famous dead people (like Elvis and Tupac) are still alive. Now the opposite is happening.
In recent weeks, frantic online chatter has claimed that Catherine is dead or even in an induced coma – a rumor dismissed by the palace as “ridiculous”. Internet sleuths explained that photos of Catherine in cars with her mother and husband actually showed another woman who was missing the princess' birthmarks on her face.
Last week, the palace sparked further speculation with a Mother's Day photo of the queen with her three children. Inconsistencies in the portrait's clothing and background led to rumors that the image had been removed from old photos to conceal her true whereabouts. When Catherine apologized for editing the picture, the hashtag #WhereIsKateMiddleton spread across social media.
Another video of Catherine and her husband in a store in recent days has been scoured by conspiracy theorists who say she looks too blurry, too healthy, too thin, too straight-haired and too unprotected by bodyguards to really be the princess. After a video circulated this week showing the Union flag at half-staff at Buckingham Palace, social media users interpreted the footage as a sign that either the princess or the cancer-stricken King Charles III. had died. The video turned out to be of a building in Istanbul in 2022, after the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
Reused footage, easy-to-create computer-generated images, a general reluctance among most viewers to fact-check easily debunked claims, and even foreign disinformation efforts can all help fuel doubts about the existence or independence of celebrities. There are rumors that Mr. Biden will be played by several masked actors, including Jim Carrey. According to rapper Kanye West (who himself is often referred to as a clone), Mr. Musk is one of up to 30 clones. Last year, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin was confronted during a streamed press conference by an AI-generated version of himself who asked him about his alleged body doubles.
Glimpses into celebrity lives were once carefully curated and rationed through a limited number of media channels, said Moya Luckett, a media historian at New York University. Few public figures experienced such upheaval as Paul McCartney in 1969, when a rumor circulated that the Beatle had died years earlier and been replaced by a look-alike. The alleged evidence – tongue-in-cheek lyrics and secret messages in reversed titles of Beatles songs – so fascinated the public that Mr McCartney endured multiple interviews and photo shoots to prove his presence on the mortal coil.
These days, celebrity content is widespread and constantly available. Public engagement is a crucial (and often requested) part of the public sphere; It's not privacy. Reality is retouched and filtered through filters, making some public figures appear timeless while arousing unfounded suspicion in those who do not.
When fans believe a famous person is in distress, solving the case is viewed as a community bonding activity that arises from “a sense of entitlement under the guise of concern,” Dr. said. Luckett. She calls the practice “worry trolling.”
“It's about wanting to control how this person reacts to me and wanting to be part of their narrative: I've already exhausted all the information that was out there and now I need more,” she said, noting that a The current obsession with true crime stories has a similar impulse. “I don’t think you necessarily want to save or help.”
Britney Spears, fresh from a restrictive conservatorship, shared a series of unfiltered and often eccentric posts last year that some fans interpreted as evidence that she had been replaced by a proxy.
So-called Britney truthers analyzed what they said were discrepancies in Ms. Spears' tattoos, the gaps in her teeth and the color of her eyes. In one forum, a thread titled “She's been cloned!” garnered nearly 400 comments. A popular hashtag transformed one of Ms. Spears' best-known lyrics into #itsbritneyglitch, which appeared alongside claims that a look-alike had used an AI filter to imitate the singer online.
Ms. Spears, who was filmed in Las Vegas this year, has repeatedly denied falsehoods about her death or brush with death. “It makes me sick that it's even legal to make up stories that I almost died,” she wrote on Instagram last February. A few months later, she posted (and then deleted) “I'm not a dead person!!!” People quoted her in October as saying, “No more conspiracy, no more lies.”
Conspiracy theory believers aren't necessarily believers: Some of the leading voices behind election fraud lies have admitted in court that their claims were false. Ed Katrak Spencer, a lecturer in digital cultures at Queen Mary University of London, said the public attempt to expose a fake celebrity can feel playful.
This month, a years-old conspiracy theory surrounding singer Avril Lavigne resurfaced in a tongue-in-cheek podcast by comedian Joanne McNally, who called her first episode “What the Hell.” The claim – that Ms. Lavigne had died and been replaced by a doppelganger – comes from a Brazilian blog called “Avril Está Morta,” or “Avril is Dead,” which itself noted “how vulnerable the world is to things “No matter how strange they seem.” In 2017, more than 700 people signed an online petition urging Ms. Lavigne and her lookalike to provide “proof of life.”
“Fans are vocal performers themselves; The web and TikTok in particular are platforms for performance,” said Dr. Spencer. “It's more about content creation and distribution, with all of this existing as a kind of scene. It’s all about the attention economy.”
Dr. Spencer, who worked on academic papers on rumors about Beyoncé, said it is possible to debunk celebrity conspiracy theories. In 2020, a politician in Florida accused the singer of faking her black heritage “for exposure” and said she was actually an Italian woman named Ann Marie Lastrassi who was involved in a deep conspiracy related to the Black Lives Matter movement be in league.
Their supporters, the BeyHive, adopted “Lastrassi” as a term of endearment and incorporated it into fan fiction and online tributes. Beyoncé herself has addressed claims that she and husband Jay-Z are in a secret society, singing on “Formation” that “all you haters are corny with this Illuminati mess.”
“It all comes down to the question of authenticity and the crisis of trust in people’s perception of authenticity,” said Dr. Spencer. “People are constantly questioning what they see.”
Audio produced by Sarah Diamond.
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